Children are victims of COVID hysteria

When it became obvious that the Titanic was not going to survive its tragic collision with the iceberg in the North Atlantic, those in positions of authority started to do the human triage necessary in emergencies. Who would be saved, who would perish, and who would be empowered with those impossible decisions? Ultimately, it came down to the formula used from the beginning of civil society: Women and children first.

And that’s how it’s usually been, a recognition that society protects its weakest before tending to the able-bodied. The fact that women were considered in that calculus alongside of children is not surprising, given the way we’ve been treated by the legal and social constructs for most of the last 500 years. That sounds unusually feminist of me, but it’s simply a fact. It’s changed, to some great degree.

But not for children. Even though we’ve failed them in so many instances, there’s never been any question that their interests should be placed before anyone else’s. Until now, that is, in the COVID era.

I’ve watched with horror as children are no longer the ones who are shuttled into the proverbial lifeboats when the ship of state hits the iceberg. First, we closed down the schools without any notice. An argument can be made that at the beginning of the pandemic when we had few facts about what this beast was, and how it was transmitted, it made sense to stop the clocks and lock the doors. Fear and ignorance warranted drastic measures.

Then, as we began to see the horrific impact of virtual schooling on young children, we started opening up the classrooms. Some were more courageous, like many of the private and Catholic schools in our region and nationally.

But even when the schools opened, they forced the children to wear masks, even when studies showed that transmission in academic settings was minimal. A widely-cited article in The Atlantic by David Zweig pointed out the flawed methodology used to argue that schools that had mask mandates had fewer cases of COVID than those without. It’s wrong, and the CDC keeps citing this baseless study for its mask crusade.

This was before Omicron, which is a monster on steroids and can be passed as easily as the common cold, so the earlier preoccupation with keeping the students mummified was an academic freak show of apprehension. Now it might be prudent to use masks if we can actually establish they stop the spread of Omicron, but that Atlantic article and voluminous anecdotal evidence prove that at least with the alpha and delta versions of the virus, that simply isn’t the case.

The fact that we are now debating whether children should be vaccinated is much more troubling than hermetically sealing them in useless pieces of cloth and paper. And while there is legitimate, substantial evidence to prove that vaccines do minimize the severity of the illness (no matter which form of the virus you get), that’s not enough to mandate vaccines for kids. Not even close.

Adults may talk the good talk about protecting the young ones, but the teachers who marched out of Chicago public schools earlier this month didn’t give a damn about their students. They were worried about themselves.

And guess what? It’s okay to admit that, as long as they admit that. But they don’t. These adults are trying to make it seem as if they are noble guardians of childhood, ensuring that their wide-eyed little charges are protected against the big bad GOP bogeymen.

But since the federal numbers show that kids aren’t filling up emergency rooms, and respected journalists like David Zweig are showing that masks really don’t have the salutary impact we’re promised, and the CDC admits that getting vaccinated protects you against the virus (or at least minimizes the harm) but does little or nothing to stop you from infecting someone else, why are we engaging in these debates to begin with?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because the mantra is no longer “women and children first.” It’s “jump into whatever boat you can find, the kids be damned.”

And that works, as long as you don’t turn your heads to look back at the kids standing on the deck, as the ship sinks deeper into the dark water.